Justice as Right Relationship: From Charity to Solidarity
In the past decades, Peace, Justice and the Integrity of Creation have moved from the periphery to the heart of mission. Still fresh today ~ the Synod of Bishops in 1971 gave a great impetus when they wrote, "Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel, or of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation" (Justice for the World #6).
The Hebrew words for justice in the Bible (seder, mishpat, sedaqah) refer to the solidarity with a group of people rather than to the rights of individual persons. These words have everything to do with social relationships. They also reflect who Yahweh is. Moved by compassion, God vindicates the rights of the oppressed against the agents of death. The Exodus story of the Bible presents Yahweh as the God of the victims of political, economic, cultural and religious systems.
Biblical justice calls for right distribution of goods and for the access to the sources of life. When things are alienated from those to whom they belong by God's design, there can only be conflict, disorder and death. Biblical justice expects things to change, and things must change if there is to be abundant life and life giving relationships.
As we enter 2026, more than fifty years after that prophetic synod, the call grows more urgent. Ecological crisis, widening inequality, and forced migration remind us that redemption is embodied transformation, not spiritual abstraction. The God who heard enslaved cries in Egypt still hears the marginalized today.
True justice is not charity that leaves structures intact, but solidarity that transforms them—standing with rather than for, receiving wisdom from those the world overlooks. The Hebrew vision of justice as right relationship challenges our individualism and calls us back to a community where no one's flourishing comes at another's expense, where the integrity of creation is honoured, and where abundant life becomes present reality through our committed action and God's sustaining grace.
